COURTESY ALEX PEARSON-POTTS
Alex and Kelly Pearson-Potts flew this flag on their porch in solidarity with LGBTQ neighbors.
On Saturday, October 7, they got an early morning text from a neighbor: "Did you take your Pride flag down?" It was then that Kelly discovered a serious act of vandalism: someone had ripped the flag off the flagpole and left it wadded it up on their porch. Once it was unfurled after police arrived, she says, it became clear that someone had set it on fire. There was a gaping, charred hole in its center. And both it and their porch were smeared with ketchup.
COURTESY ALEX PEARSON-POTTS
The couple's flag pole was bent by the act of the flag being ripped off.
"The ketchup smeared all over the flag and then all over the boards of our porch — the only way to interpret it is that it's supposed to be blood," says Alex. "For somebody to be willing to go that far is pretty shocking."
St. Charles Police confirm that a report was taken on the morning on October 7 but have declined other comment at this time. Still, the Pearson-Pottses say the police response was reassuring. They say the officer who visited not only took their DNA samples (presumably so he could exclude their DNA from any subsequent matches) but asked multiple neighbors for any surveillance footage that showed the couple's porch.
Before the incident, the Pearson-Potts home didn't have any cameras, but the couple says they've now put them up. They can't help but feel a bit freaked out that someone walked through their garden while they were sleeping, much less torched a flag in a place that was likely perilously close to the decorative hay bales on their porch.
COURTESY OF ALEX PEARSON-POTTS
The flag was left crumpled on the porch, but it later became clear it had been burnt.
Even so, they want to keep the focus not on what happened to them but on the friends and neighbors they were seeking to support in the first place. They note that they are not themselves part of the LGBTQ community — they just want to support people who are, a group that includes several neighbors.
"For us, it was kind of important for people to walk or drive around their neighborhood and know that people out there are supportive of them," says Alex.
And now, he says, what happened to their flag points to the hatred LGBTQ people face in St. Charles, in St. Louis and in America. "Look at what this community has to deal with on a daily basis," he says. "That anybody would have that much hate for somebody else — it's really disappointing."
But the incident has the couple unbowed with their sign of support. Their new flag is coming this Wednesday.
"We're upping our flag game," Alex promises. "That's how we roll. We will make our stance very well known."
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